Color image processing apparatus and method, and storage medium

a color image and processing apparatus technology, applied in the direction of digital output to print units, instruments, digitally marking record carriers, etc., can solve the problems of character areas that cannot always be perfectly detected by image area separation, poor reliability, and determination errors that cannot be seen clearly

Inactive Publication Date: 2006-06-06
CANON KK
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  • Summary
  • Abstract
  • Description
  • Claims
  • Application Information

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0017]It is another object of the present invention to provide an image processing apparatus which can prevent image deterioration by decreasing resolution differences in units of color components, which are produced by a process for reproducing a high-quality image.

Problems solved by technology

However, when an image in the YMCK format is processed frame-sequentially in units of color components, since each process cannot specify color, character areas cannot always be perfectly detected by image area separation.
Also, natural image areas may often be erroneously detected as character areas, resulting in poor reliability.
Especially, determination errors stand out in an output of, e.g., a CG (computer graphics) image or the like, since such image suffers less noise.
When an image is frame-sequentially processed by an YMCK interface, since no color information is available in each process, image area separation cannot always be perfectly attained.

Method used

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  • Color image processing apparatus and method, and storage medium
  • Color image processing apparatus and method, and storage medium
  • Color image processing apparatus and method, and storage medium

Examples

Experimental program
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first embodiment

[First Embodiment]

[0051]FIG. 1 is a system block diagram of this embodiment. In FIG. 1, reference numerals 10 to 15 denote the same components as the components 101 to 106 shown in FIG. 26. Also, reference numerals 18 and 19 denote the same components 107 and 108 in FIG. 26.

[0052]A characteristic feature of this embodiment lies in an attribute map memory 16 and image processing unit 17. A rasterizer 14 generates a bitmap image on an image memory 15 on the basis of print data (including various kinds of control information, rendering command, and grayscale image data) received from a host computer 10, i.e., on the basis of commands corresponding to individual image parts (to be referred to as objects hereinafter) that form an image (image forming unit 19). In this case, the rasterizer 14 generates attribute map information for attributes of the image parts and the generated bitmap image on the basis of information (commands) instructed by the print data, and writes the generated info...

second embodiment

[Second Embodiment]

[0118]In the above embodiment, character and photo images are processed by switching the 400-line / 200-line processes, and the character is output at a higher resolution (400 lines), thus improving the character quality. A character portion which is determined using at least one of the attribute map and the image area separation result may use a higher resolution, and may undergo a smoothing process using interpolation, thus improving character reproducibility. Although the basic arrangement is the same as that of the above embodiment, an interpolation process is added to the line number switching unit.

[0119]FIG. 19 is a block diagram for explaining the image processing unit of this embodiment. A smoothing circuit 1813 generates data having a resolution twice the scan resolution in accordance with at least one of the attribute map data and image area separation result described in the first embodiment and a 400-line / 800-line switching signal, as will be described i...

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Abstract

A full-color image input from an external apparatus can undergo an optimal adaptive process using an image area separation circuit mounted in a color copying machine main body, and also attribute map information, thus providing a higher-quality image. When a color copying machine (18) prints an image such as a computer graphics image sent from a host computer (10), a raster image processor (13) renders bitmap data of a given recording color on an image memory (15) on the basis of that print data, and stores attribute information in an attribute map memory (16) in units of pixels. The color copying machine (18) forms an image on the basis of image data of respective recording color components, which are frame-sequentially input from the raster image processor (13), and attribute information from the attribute map memory (16).

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to a color image processing apparatus and method, and a storage medium.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Conventionally, a system as shown in FIG. 26 is known as a system mentioned above. FIG. 26 schematically shows the arrangement of a system that creates a page layout document of DTP or the like, or a wordprocessing or graphic document using a host computer 101, and outputs such document as a hardcopy via a color laser beam printer.[0003]Reference numeral 102 denotes an application which runs on the host computer. For example, document edit application software such as “WORD®” available from Microsoft Corporation, page layout software such as PageMaker® available from Adobe Systems Incorporated, and the like are representative ones. A digital document created by such software is passed on to a printer driver 103 via an operating system (OS: not shown) of the computer. The digital document is expressed as a set of command dat...

Claims

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Application Information

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Patent Type & Authority Patents(United States)
IPC IPC(8): G06F15/00G06K1/00G06K15/02G06F3/12B41J2/525G06T1/00H04N1/46H04N1/50H04N1/56
CPCG06K15/02H04N1/506G06K15/1814G06K15/1807H04N1/56
Inventor SAKAUE, TSUTOMU
Owner CANON KK
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